J. Meejin Yoon, the newly appointed head of the Department of Architecture, will be the first woman to fill that position when she assumes the post July 1 according to MIT News.

Yoon, who has been a faculty member in the School of Architecture and Planning since 2001, has won many awards in her field and has been praised for her “multidisciplinary practice” working at the “intersection of architecture, interactive environments,” and “public space,” the article said.

Yoon told MIT News she believes her department is in a unique position to capitalize on its context within a world-renowned institution of science and technology. She hopes to continue to build on the strengths of the department “for the next generation of our disciplines.”

Alan H. Guth ’68 to share million-dollar prize in Astrophysics

Alan Guth will share the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics with Andrei D. Linde and Alexei A. Starobinsky, according to the Kavli Foundation’s website. All three were recognized for their work on filling in theoretical gaps in the Big Bang theory .

Guth’s contribution was his 1980 hypothesis “that the universe was initially trapped in a peculiar state from which it decayed, in the process expanding exponentially and liberating the energy present in our universe today,” according to the prize announcement.

Guth’s hypothesis, which is called the theory of cosmic inflation, received widespread attention in March when researchers found evidence in support of the hypothesis in the form of gravitational waves reportedly produced by the inflation, according to MIT News.